Javier Mendez, 53, only showed up to the county fire department’s annual chili cookoff because the chief had bailed him out of a small electrical blaze at his vintage camper restoration shop back in March, and he didn’t want to be the guy who owed a favor to the people who keep your barn from burning to the ground. He’d brought a batch of his abuela’s beef and chipotle chili, figured he’d hand it off, drink one cheap domestic beer, and be back to sanding the 1972 Airstream in his bay before the sun dipped below the Blue Ridge ridgeline. He leaned against the bed of his beat-up 2001 Ford F-150, picking at a loose thread on his oil-stained flannel, already mentally tallying the supplies he needed to pick up from the hardware store the next morning, when she walked over.
She was his new neighbor, Clara, who’d moved into the cottage a half mile down his dirt road three months prior, the one who left mason jars of wild blackberry jam on his porch rail every other week even though he’d never actually spoken to her. She was wearing faded denim overalls over a plain white tank top, work boots caked in red clay from planting apple saplings that morning, a faint smudge of dirt across her left cheek. She smelled like pine resin and cinnamon gum, and when she held out a paper plate and asked if she could try a scoop of his chili, her fingers brushed his when he passed her the sample cup. The jolt ran up his arm fast enough he almost dropped the ladle, and he pulled his hand back like he’d touched a hot exhaust pipe. She laughed, low and warm, and said “Relax, I don’t bite. Unless you ask nice.”
He knew she was a travel nurse, had heard it from the guy who runs the general store in town, and the old, petty grudge he’d carried for eight years pricked at the back of his neck. His ex-wife had left him for a travel nurse, had called him boring, stuck in his ways, too wrapped up in his rusted old campers to care about anything else. He’d written off every travel nurse he’d heard of since as selfish, flaky, the kind of person who leaves before the paint dries on a new wall. But then she took a bite of the chili, moaned loud enough that a couple of people at the next table glanced over, and said “Holy shit, your abuela was a genius. I’d fight a bear for the recipe.” He found himself laughing before he could stop himself.
They talked for 20 minutes, then 40, the hum of the bluegrass band playing by the pavilion fading into background noise the longer they stood there. She leaned in when he rambled about the Airstream he was restoring for a retired teacher in Tampa, her shoulder less than two inches from his, and he could feel the heat radiating off her skin through his flannel. She held eye contact when he admitted he hadn’t talked to anyone this long outside of work in years, no pity, just a soft, lopsided smile, and when she tucked a strand of brown hair streaked with silver behind her ear, he noticed the tiny, faded scar on her left cheekbone, from a bike crash when she was 16, she told him.
She asked if he wanted to walk down to the creek behind the fairgrounds to get away from the noise, and he hesitated for half a second, every stupid rule he’d built for himself over the last eight years screaming at him to say no, to get in his truck and go home to his empty cabin and his old radio. He nodded instead. The grass was dewy, seeping through the hole in the toe of his work boot, as they tramped down the dirt path, and when they reached the bank, she sat on a half-rotted oak log and patted the spot next to her. He sat, their knees brushing when he shifted, and he didn’t pull away. She told him she’d heard him singing Tejano music loud enough through the open bay doors of his shop that she could sing along when she drove past, and he felt his face heat up so bad he was sure his ears were bright red. He admitted he’d been eating the jam she left on his porch for months, had been too nervous to walk down and thank her.
She leaned in then, kissed him slow, and she tasted like chipotle chili and root beer, and he kissed her back, all that petty, stupid resentment he’d carried for almost a decade melting away like wax under a torch. When they pulled apart, she laughed again, and wiped a smudge of chili off his chin with her thumb.
They walked back to the fairgrounds 40 minutes later, her hand tucked in his, and the fire chief winked and gave him a thumbs up when they passed his table. Javier flipped him off playfully, and Clara snickered. He grabbed the half-empty crockpot of chili from the folding table, asked if she wanted to come back to his shop, he could show her the Airstream, make her a glass of his abuela’s horchata he had chilling in his mini fridge. She squeezed his hand, said yes, and he unlocked the passenger door of his truck, helped her up into the seat. He glanced at the dashboard when he climbed in the driver’s side, and spotted a mason jar of peach jam tucked in the cup holder, the kind she made, that she must have left there when he wasn’t looking.
